Stuck
by IchirukiFan94
Summary: Series of short Ichigo/Rukia oneshots. Chapter Thirteen, in which Rukia wants Ichigo to try something new, sexy, and just a little bit wrong.
1. Chapter 1

Just a quick little one shot to get me back in the fanfiction mood. I'm thinking of turning this into a series of one shots, so let me know if you like and want to see more. Review and send me love!

* * *

When he got back to their house after the _longest_ day he'd had in quite some time as Captain of his own squad, a day that involved Kenpachi trying to start a fight for the 458th time and his fourth seat accidentally putting a bunch of transfer papers through the shredder, he was ready to sit down, and have a well-deserved dinner and sleep all night.

But the scene when he arrived wasn't quite what he expected.

"… What the hell are you doing?" he asked, quirking one orange eyebrow up.

She huffed, clearly frustrated. "I'm baking a cake, what does it look like I'm doing?"

He smirked, his handsome face encouraging a punch. "Well, you've got something in the oven."

He left for a moment for the kitchen, then returned and crossed from the living room doorway to the sofa. He turned on the television and took a swig of his newly opened beer.

"So, have a good day?"

"I hate you, you bastard. Why didn't you answer your mobile?"

"I left it on the night stand."

"And if something had _happened_?"

"If something had _happened_ and no one had immediately flashstepped over and told me then I'd have to invade Squad 4 and make them regret it."

She clenched her jaw in repressed anger. "Well obviously I could have done with being able to get hold of you."

"Yeaaah… what happened exactly?"

"I was having a nap on the sofa and thought it would be easier to stand if I rolled onto the floor."

"That was pretty fucking stupid."

"Oh, so you know all the techniques for 4 foot 10 girls to be able to stand despite being eight months pregnant?"

He actually smiled this time. "No, I guess I don't. Need a little help?"

She tried to repress a smile and failed. "Yes please, I've been stuck lying here since 3 and I really need to pee."


	2. Chapter 2

This may be super out of character, and I'm sorry if it is, but I wanted to write something where it's addressed that they didn't see each other for ages when it obviously bothered Ichigo instead of dancing around it. But then it occurred to me that there must be a reason they _haven't_ addressed it in the canon. So I talked about that instead. I just hope it's still understandable even if you haven't read Much Ado About Nothing - which you definitely should if you haven't! It's insanely good for a four hundred year old romcom.

This is just going to be a series of one-shots now, I think. The updates will be sporadic, but I've just been feeling this insane urge to write at the moment so I'll ride it out until it's over! Enjoy and review (and thank you for the reviews for the last chapter!).

* * *

When it began, Rukia wasn't exactly sure what to make of it.

"I have no idea what's going on," she whispered in his ear, her voice careful not to carry in the evening air and disturb the other viewers.

"You're old, you should get it," he whispered back quickly, smirking, not wanting to miss a moment of his favourite work of Shakespeare.

He'd dragged her along after she'd quietly suggested that they spend a little time together after the seventeen months they'd spent apart. She'd self-consciously ducked her head, worried that he'd interpret it the wrong way and tell her where to go. He hadn't though; he'd smoothly mentioned the outdoor Shakespeare play he'd wanted to go see. She'd agreed.

Rukia felt that she was treading very lightly on Ichigo's right side. At any moment he'd break and yell at her and tell her he never wanted to see her again and she couldn't exactly blame him. She didn't seem like the best friend at the moment. She had abandoned him, for God's sake.

She shifted her weight to her left butt cheek, already going numb on the picnic blanket they'd brought along. She quietly sighed and tried to pay attention again but it seemed pretty useless. All she could gather so far was that some soldiers had returned from a war, after that it was just nonsense to her.

An eyebrow raised as her interest was perked when the cast on stage reduced to just two: she thought they were called Beatrice and Benedick, and they didn't seem to be the main couple of the play.

"I wonder that you will still be talking, Signoir Benedick: nobody marks you," the brunette actress slyly commented after the man had been ignored by his group. Rukia smirked.

"What, my dear Lady Disdain! Are you yet living?" he replied.

They bantered back and forth for while, and though she didn't understand the meaning of most of what they were saying, she could see still see the humour between the two.

She sighed a little again and took a sip of the tea in her portable mug that she'd brought, warming her from the slight breeze in the night air. Benedick and Beatrice were separated again, and the men were talking about a hero, or, as she realised, the blonde actress named Hero and her boyfriend Claudio. She wasn't as interested in that couple. They were all lovey-dovey and obvious for each other.

They seemed pretty boring.

* * *

At the break in the middle of the play, Ichigo turned to her.

"So what do you think so far?"

She was frowning ever so slightly.

"I'm not really sure."

"You don't understand what's happening?"

Her eyes widened slightly and she shifted on the blanket.

"No, I think I do, it's just..." The frown was back on her face as she looked to him. "All it takes for them to fall madly in love was for them to think that the other one was in love with them first? Even though they seemed to hate each other before?"

He smiled at her condensation of the plot, the previous boyish-ness of years past replaced with an intimidating handsomeness. He put his hands behind him and leaned back.

"They've always been in love, see? That's why they were having this 'merry war' in the first place. They're both just too proud to admit it to themselves. That's why they argue so much, because they're frustrated."

But her frown showed she wasn't sure, so he quickly went and got her an pot of ice cream from the vendor walking between the patrons to appease her.

Ichigo felt like he was treading on eggshells with Rukia. She'd be gone the entire time he'd been powerless, and that wasn't something to be taken lightly. He wasn't sure if there was something he was supposed to have done, but realistically he didn't think there was anything he could have done. He couldn't have gone to see her. He just didn't know why she hadn't come to see him, and he didn't want to upset her anymore. He'd even complimented her drawings the other day just to try and make her smile, but she'd seemed even more on edge afterward. It seemed to him that at any moment she was going to bolt to Soul Society and they'd spend the next thousand years ignoring each other.

He didn't want that.

He didn't exactly know how to stop it either, though.

He thought she might like the play, his favourite, Much Ado About Nothing. Rukia seemed a lot like Beatrice, independent and sassy. But she'd sighed a few times during it and he began to wonder, as he sat back down and handed her her ice cream, if maybe it was a bad idea.

Girls were hard.

She looked thoughtful as she took her first lick from the spoon, so he tried to work out what she was thinking again.

"What did you think of the other couple? Hero and Claudio?"

"Eurgh," she noised, rolling her eyes. "They're so obvious. One-dimensional and boring."

He nodded, looking away again, and towards the sky. It was going pink in the sunset.

"I just don't understand how they can be getting married when they have no trust in each other."

He looked back to her, surprised. "Huh?"

She shrugged, and turned her attention to him and away from her dessert. "One guy tells Claudio that the woman he's in love with has slept with someone else and his immediate thought is to believe him and humiliate Hero on her wedding day in front of everyone she knows? That's not love." She looked back down and fiddled with her spoon. "Love is having absolute faith in someone, even in the bad times, I think." A tiny smile tugged on the corners of her lips. "That's why I like Beatrice and Benedick. Even when they hate each other, they still understand one another."

Ichigo kept looking at her. "So you think Beatrice and Benedick are the better couple?"

"I think they'll be happy."

The actors reappeared on the stage, the second half began, and Ichigo didn't look away from Rukia.

* * *

As the final applause died down, Ichigo and Rukia stood. He gathered the rubbish to throw away as she shook out and folded the blanket, and put it in her bag.

They turned to talk to the road.

"So, what did you think of the end? Did you still like Beatrice and Benedick the most?"

"I think so."

They kept walking in the quiet for a little while.

"You know, when we were studying it in class, most of the girls liked Hero and Claudio better."

She sniggered lightly. "Of course they would. That scenario is all about the knight in shining armour, isn't it?"

He raised one eyebrow at her as she kept facing ahead. "And you don't like that?"

"I don't think it's real." She tipped her head to one side thoughtfully. "The other couple... they wouldn't proclaim their love for each other every day of the week, but that doesn't mean they don't love each other. They just don't need to. They trust each other enough to just know." She smiled again, that tiny smile that he couldn't stop looking at. "I like that." She looked at him. "I like that they can be independent but still love each other."

He looked ahead, swallowed lightly and took a deep breath.

"You know... we haven't talked about... when you were away."

She was still smiling. "I know, I thought that earlier."

She looked to him again. "But I don't think we need to, do we?"


	3. Chapter 3

Kind of a follow on from the last chapter, but kind of stand alone too. I think it might be incredibly ooc, but have fun reading anyway!

* * *

Rukia is… different.

Or maybe it's me. Who knows?

I haven't seen her in an age, and who knows what she's done in that time. I have done nothing. I've gone to school, played sports, gotten jobs. She could've saved the world in that time.

I thought we'd come to an understanding a few weeks earlier. That we'd go from a little awkward to whatever normal was for us.

But she's meaner. But a different type of mean. Maybe 'mean' is the wrong word. Teasing. She seems to think it's hilarious to make me blush, to make my face clash with the hair on top of my head. At first I'd tell her to stop, but that would just encourage her more. Now I try to ignore her, but when she goes too far an errant growl will come out, and I'll want to fucking stab myself with my own sword rather than see the look of triumph on her face.

She'll point out my stubble in the morning, point out when I've shaved it off. Laugh when a stray bit of hair sticks out wrong from the rest. Take the piss out of my fashion sense.

Maybe a month after she made her magnificent return, I had a bad day. I slept through my alarm, it was raining on the walk to school, I forgot to pick up my homework for history, Orihime hadn't even tried to be subtle about staring at me from across the classroom, Keigo seemed to be doing everything he could to annoy me, I forgot my football boots, and it was still raining when I walked home from school.

She was at home when I got in. She didn't bother going to school anymore, and I wasn't really sure what she was still doing staying here, picking off stray hollows attracted to my once again high spiritual pressure, practising in the basement under the shop, and doing stuff like walking around my house in sweatshirts and pyjama shorts, being completely adorable and completely untouchable. Like she's forgotten that I am, in fact, a teenage guy. When she teased me, I was mute. I was defenceless and I would have to escape.

Not today. Today, I was in a spectacularly bad mood, and I snapped.

"Nice hair." She smirked at me, her face ever so slightly blurred from me by the steam from the mug of tea she held in front of her face, one bare leg crossed in front of the other as she leant against the kitchen counter.

My hair was probably a mess, slicked back wet from the rain. I just wasn't in the mood. I was sick of seeing that smirk on her face.

I walked to the kitchen table and grasped the back of one of the chairs. I took a couple of deep breaths, my jaw and knuckles tightening.

"What the fuck do you want from me?"

She flinched slightly, probably from the anger I was showing rather than the blush she was expecting, her head tilting a little. A frown came between her big violet eyes. "What?"

I spoke slower, more patronisingly. "What do you want from me?"

The mug in her hands dropped a couple of inches while her frown deepened, and then she put her tea down altogether.

"I don't know what you mean."

"The fuck you don't." My glare got harsher, but she didn't shrink from it. That girl wouldn't shrink back if there was a gun pointed between her massive eyes. "You seem to be determined to make my life a fucking misery and I am really fucking sick of it."

Now, her frown turned into one of confusion and, more frustratingly, of concern. That just pissed me off even more. "What are you talking about?"

"You are always here, finding some way to make me angry and embarrassed." I let go of the back of the chair and paced the kitchen, throwing my hands in my hair and fisting it in frustration. "Every time I fucking turn around you're there ready to piss me off, trying to call me out on every single fucking thing I do." I stopped pacing, took a step towards her and pointed my finger right in her face. "You know if you were looking for a way to torture me then you should have just left me here without my powers. It would have saved you a lot of effort."

She leaned ever so slightly forward, and I thought she was about to fight me back, confusion still breaching her features, until, suddenly, it cleared. She leaned back again, then looked at me like I was very, very stupid. I had a feeling she was about to make me look very, very stupid.

"Ichigo," she said, talking as though explaining to a child, just a tiny sign of a smirk on her face. She looked… shocked as her head tilted downwards slightly. "I've been trying to flirt with you."

I think my eyes might have widened a little, but other than that I was frozen, looking like a fucking idiot with my finger right in her face. After about ten seconds of her staring at me I felt the blush start on my face again, and I flash stepped to my room. I stood in the centre of my floor, my face in my hands, blushing the hardest I have ever blushed, feeling every bit a strawberry, until I grabbed a sweatshirt, pulled it over my head, put my hood up, and sat on my bed with my back against the wall.

* * *

It must have been an hour or so later when she came into my room. The sun had set behind the clouds, and the rain had finally stopped in the meantime. I hadn't closed my curtains or turned on a lamp, so the only light coming in was from the moon. My cheeks were still a little warm. I wondered if my face would ever feel cold again.

She was still in a baggy sweatshirt and short shorts, her legs unfairly long considering her shortness. Her newly-short hair had been pinned to the back of her head messily, and the light from the hallway behind her highlighted the even shorter loose waves that had inevitably escaped, and her sleek silhouette. I couldn't see her face properly. She cleared her throat very quietly.

"This explains quite a lot, you know," she said, playfully.

The blush began to grow and I growled audibly, which pissed me off even more again. I stupidly slammed my fist into the wall beside me, hearing a crumbling of plaster and a slight sting across my knuckles. Very stupid, but I got my point across.

Except this girl would goad a lion in a matchstick cage if she thought she'd get what she wanted from it.

"You're lucky I think you're cute when you're red."

I looked up at her, slightly shocked. Where was the reserved Kuchiki ice princess when I needed her?

She seemed to realise what she'd said was un-Rukia-like as well. "It's hard to be self-conscious when you're this embarrassed." She smirked. I blushed. Wasn't this supposed to be the other way around? Wasn't the guy supposed to make the girl blush?

She started to step further into my room as I felt my emasculation fully. I stopped her. "Don't even think about coming any closer." Her eyes became impossibly wide.

I'd known I'd liked Rukia for a while – I stormed the afterlife for her, so it wasn't much of a secret I didn't think. I was pretty sure everyone knew. The constant trying to reach her in the middle of battles, revenge shots when she got hurt, tunnel vision when she was there, being a mess in the 18 months she was gone and how I felt (and probably looked) when she came back again. I didn't even have the opportunity to be subtle my feelings were so fucking on my sleeve.

I was pretty sure my family knew, my friends knew, my fellow Shinigami knew, her brother knew. She must have known. She was this supremely hot chick who showed up half way through me going through puberty, slept in my bedroom, got into fights and then stuck around in my head when she left. How could I not love her? She was like a wet dream come to life.

I growled a little again, an annoying habit I was going to have to train myself out of, and stood up.

Because what was pissing me off _now_ was that she clearly thought she'd won. That I looked like a complete imbecile. I wasn't the kind of guy who was good with words. You ask me why I saved her from her own people, all I could say was that I 'owed' her. I owed her for everything. Not just my life, since that seemed pretty redundant now I knew of Soul Society. I owed her for giving me a life, for turning me into the person I was today. You ask me to make a love declaration and I could easily burst into a Shakespearean sonnet, but I never would. You ask me why I love her, and I'm not sure I could vocalise it in my head, never mind to another human being.

I wasn't good with words. I could have yelled at her, where she stood in my doorway. I could have gone bright red during the yelling, but she would have gone quiet. I could make her never do it again.

Because she's not good with words either, and I _know_ this. She doesn't necessarily like people and being social – we could sit in silence for hours and not be awkward. So for her to make an effort to fill those silences, to be the first to take a step _somewhere_ , meant more to me than words could say.

I walked over to her by the doorway, closed the door, and pinned her to the wall she was leaning against, trapped between my arms.

Her back to the wall, she gazed up at me, frowning ever so slightly. "What are you doing?"

I didn't say anything.

I blushed.

I leaned in.

* * *

A/N: this started going one way, then started going another. I thought about adding 'and then he banged her against his door' but I was trying to be romantic so maybs not. But I like to think he probably did. I just wanted something nice and happy because I'm sick of spending around 90 seconds flicking through every week's new Bleach like, 'oh another battle and no character development. I just _love_ ensemble casts'.

Next chap might be in the future again, I struggle to write pre-timeskip because it reminds me of when I was 15, and it stresses me out to think that someone was that age and having to fight hollows, so…


	4. Chapter 4

As you probably know, Bleach is on its very Last Legs, and if you ship ichiruki as hard as I do you're probably a little expectant. But, sadly, Kubo is a Trolly Troll Troll from Trolltown, Trollmania, and I have this horrendous sensation that he's gonna do something stupid like make you envisage for yourself whether Ichigo and Rukia end up together, or if it'll be him and Orihime. There's a shit ton of fans who will be disappointed either way so I can see him disappointing everyone instead. So, in case that horrible feeling in my gut isn't appendicitis and is actually foreshadowing, here's a little something. This is a lil inspired by a few lines from one of my favourite BTVS fics ('West of the Moon..' by KnifeEdge) where Buffy says, "I want to meet a guy (...). One that'll make me laugh, and appreciate me, and who I won't chase off. One who will just…love me, forever." Read the shit outta that by the way, it's incredible. This one shot is a little vague on the final battle details because, frankly, I haven't a fucking clue where Kubo's going with this, so just enjoy.

* * *

She was always going to be there, right at the end. Assuming this was, in fact, the end. He's not even nineteen yet. He's sick of this now, that niggling feeling that nothing has been normal or routine since he was fifteen. He'd like to be normal, or his kind of normal anyway. Ichigo is hopeful this is the beginning of it. That bastard, that all-seeing, all-knowing, all-killing-and-arm-removing piece of shit, is finally, completely, dead. Obliterated. Scattered into the wind. That kind of shit. And she helped him do it. They brought down their swords together, their powers combined, their near-identical reiatsu as one.

They're both still in their bankais when a healing squad immediately interrupts their smiles of achievement at one another, no more than about 9 seconds to absorb that they had won before Soul Society came crashing back down on them. Next thing he knows, Hanatarou is shining a goddamn light in his eye and he's thisclose to punching him out. He looks away to distract himself and she's only around 20 feet away, sat on a rock, being examined herself. He notices a smudge of dirt on the back of her neck, fairly obvious against the complete whiteness of her skin, robe and hair surrounding it. Her brother arrives, and she ends her bankai.

* * *

There's lots of drinking when the end of the world is subverted. You always imagine a party, sure, but you have no. idea. how crazy it gets. That party on the Ewok moon at the end of Jedi? Tame. People celebrate being alive now, they celebrate being alive tomorrow, they celebrate that their friends who are no longer alive did the right thing and helped save the world. They'll cry for the dead tomorrow. Tonight they'll celebrate them, and on their behalf too.

Ichigo notices pretty quickly that she's not there. It's hard not to. He notices pretty quick when she's not anywhere.

"Yo!" Renji, it appears, has also survived the megalomania. "It's my strawberry!" Renji is also incredibly, incredibly drunk. Ichigo ducks an arm that was either going to envelope him in a stranglehold or a hug and he has no desire to find out, or experience, either. He's searching out Rukia's spirit thread while Renji moans about some shit or other - maybe he's disappointed he's not the saviour of the world or something, Ichigo doesn't care. He locks down on her signature, and goes to say a quick goodbye to Renji but discovers it's unnecessary. The red-head has since put his tongue to better use in the mouth of a young, unseated brunette from squad 1, and Ichigo escapes several other offers, of both congratulations and pretty girls' beds, as well as the party.

* * *

She's looks exhausted, and she's done too much and seen too much today to berate him for arriving at her room past midnight and casually wandering into her bathroom about 0.9 of a second before she gets in the tub. She's been waiting for him for a while - he was so young and naive and a big baby when it came to women - and it just seems like the most natural thing in the world when he stands behind her, just as naked as she, puts his arms around her neck, and snuggles his face right in the crook of her shoulder. He finally exhales, this big sigh like he hadn't managed to shake the weight of the world off his shoulders before now, and rests just a fraction of his weight on her. Neither of them need to talk, or acknowledge this step. Later, she'll think there wasn't even anything sexual about him holding her like that... Or at least there wasn't for the first five minutes he was in her bathroom. He just needed her near him, breathing, for a little while.

Eventually, he lifts his weight off her, removes his arms from their hold, and lifts a cloth from the side. He dips it in the steaming bath water in front of her, then retreats again. He brushes her hair away from her neck, and brings up the hot, damp cloth.

He cleans the smudge of dirt from her neck, and carries on sweeping the cloth along her back.

Much, much later, when they are actually clean and she's asleep next to him, with still no words said, beside the odd noise and strangled name, he finds his normality. He finds his

The End


	5. Chapter 5

I'll be seeing you in two weeks Kubo Tite, you cockblocking dick. Make my ship sail.

* * *

"Dad."

Ichigo looks up from the pile of paperwork he's subjecting himself to at his desk. He had hoped that being captain of squad 0 would mean less paperwork - he had like 10 people in his squad for god's sake - but in actuality somehow he had turned out with more than the 13th Squad's lunatic midget Captain. Sunday afternoons always seemed to mean slugging away at a pile almost as tall as he was and then spending the rest of the week putting it off. This Sunday was no exception, and usually his family knew not to approach him during this time unless it was either a serious problem or they had a large cup of black coffee in their hands.

His son's hands were empty, and so Ichigo assumed the worst.

"Shit, is everything okay?!"

The boy rolls his eyes, pulls out the chair opposite him at the table and sits down. "Everything's fine. I just wanted to ask for some advice."

 _Fuck_ , is Ichigo's first thought. He has a huge suspicion of the coming chat. His eldest was now fifteen, the same age he was when he received his Shinigami powers and a girl started staying in his room. He sighs internally. He was going to have to talk about urges. Great, where was his fucking dad when he needed him?

"It's about a girl."

Fuck, he's too young to be having this discussion. Ichigo knows he was young when he became a dad for the first time but fucking hell, he's not even forty years old yet. And now his kid is gonna do the same bullshit that made him? Nah, he's not having it, fuck this, he knows the Kurosaki male's libido, he knows what they're like when they get the girl they're obsessed with naked in front of them, he's gonna be a grandfather at forty, _fuck. This._

"I think I'm in love with her."

 _Wait, what?_

Ichigo chokes just a little then clears his throat.

"That sounds... Reasonable. What do you need advice about?" _Don't say sex, don't say sex..._

"How do you know if you really love a girl?"

Ichigo's perpetual frown gets deeper.

"Err... Well, do you, uh, think about her... A lot?"

His son rolls his mother's godforsaken eyes and scoffs at him. "Well obviously. I was wondering how you knew you loved mom. You were my age when you met her, but when did you know you loved her?"

Ichigo's frown, by some miracle, becomes even deeper. He throws his pen down, leans back in his chair, slackens his mouth slightly, crosses his arms and looks to the ceiling in contemplation before answering.

"Well it wasn't the first time I met her cause she turned me into a crazy ass undead samurai and was generally just a massive bitch." He tips his head to the side and his mouth closes. "And it wasn't the second time cause she embarrassed me at school..."

"So not for a while then?"

Ichigo's frown relaxes slightly. His face emphatically shows his affirmative and he nods a little. "Oh, for sure within the first four weeks I knew her." His son stares at him, stunned. "Dude, I stormed this place for her and you're shocked I was in love with her by then?"

"I just... I thought it wasn't until you were older."

Ichigo laughs then stops abruptly when he realises his son was serious. The younger man looks for his most important piece of advice. "I think I might feel for her how you feel for mom."

Ichigo's eyebrow quirks. "Really?"

He nods. "I think I'm love her."

Ichigo snorts. "You think. Listen, I love you. I love all my kids, and I would do anything for you. I'd fight for you and die for you and I'd be glad to do it. I know I love you. But that woman in the kitchen? The one who got pregnant with you pretty much as soon as I convinced her to stay in my bed, the one who helps your younger sister with her kido, who is feeding the twins in their highchairs in the kitchen and is cooking up another sibling for you right now?" Ichigo smirks. "That woman is my soul mate.

"Now, you're my son in this lifetime, but you probably won't be in the next. I've probably never found you before and I probably never will again. But your mother thinks that she and I have met before in another life. That we have a special bond. I think she's wrong." Ichigo's stare hardens and his eyes show his certainty. "We've been together in every life. I find her, every time. I'll always find her. I'll be with her for thousands of years and never regret a second." His eyebrow quirks up. "So, do you think you love this girl, or are you certain you want to wake up next to her for the rest of eternity?"

His son's eyes are huge, and then they narrow. "Dad, you're a freak. I'm fifteen for fuck's sake." He stalks from the room the way only a moody teenager can. Ichigo shrugs, and continues with his paperwork with a tiny smile playing at the corner of his lips.

A few minutes past, and then a slight wheezing sound comes from his study's open door. Ichigo looks up.

Kuchiki Rukia stands there, in her Shinigami robes and her huge Captain's haori, her right hand resting on her heavily protruding bump and her left pulling back her long, midnight hair. The woman who refused to take her husband's name takes a deep breath and looks into the room.

"I think this may have to be the last one, Ichigo."

His face erupts into a full blown smile. "Stop trying to hump me all the time then, Rukia." They have a few millennia, after all. He'll convince her to have more in another couple hundred years.


	6. Chapter 6

A/N: Just a tiny snippet. In between bingeing early Bleach and drinking white wine and crying through the longest wait of my life. I'll probably post another before ~the end~, but you might not hear from me again if my stupid ship isn't canon because I've spent 12 years waiting and I'll be pissed as shit. So enjoy the chap!

* * *

"Do you remember when we first met?"

She turned to look at him like he was stupid, only a couple of lamps in her office lighting her so her pale skin glowed. "It was a pretty unforgettable meeting, Ichigo."

He sighed frustratedly. "I don't mean like the actual meeting, but... Before Byakuya and Renji took you back. When you lived in my closet for a few months and fuckin' ordered me around everywhere."

She didn't even look up from the papers she was signing at her desk this time, her hair pulled up to the top of her head in a high ponytail and her Captain's haori relegated to the back of the chair. "Again, it was a pretty unforgettable time, Ichigo."

He quirked an eyebrow. "So you agree you ordered me around everywhere?"

She sighed frustratedly this time, looked up to him, her pen suspended above a page. "You were a fifteen year old boy who couldn't even hold in spiritual pressure and I was the one receiving the orders. What did you think was going to happen?"

"You don't-"

"I don't just let human teenagers run riot with swords. I'm not Urahara."

He growled slightly in his throat. "That wasn't what I was trying to talk you about. Could you put down the pen for a minute?"

She raised both her eyebrows, dropped her pen, leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms expectantly.

"Between the order giving, do you remember what we were like with each other?"

She cocked her head to one side inquisitively.

He carried on.

"I liked you-"

"I should hope you still do."

All he did this time to make her hush was glare.

"I liked you and you didn't really ever admit you liked me. And I'm not even talking romantically, here. Remember that parakeet?"

She rolled her eyes in anguish and raised her hands in frustration. "That _fucking_ parakeet!"

"Right, so..." He saw the signs of an angry rant approaching, and tried to swerve her away from it, or he'd be spending the next twenty minutes reminiscing about the most annoying bird that had ever lived. "Do you remember you said that, I must care for you or whatever? To be searching for you?"

"Uh, yes..."

"You never, ever said the same thing back, and I was going through a tough time-"

"With puberty?"

"... With suddenly becoming a soul reaper, I was going to say."

"That was probably hard to deal with, too."

He grit his teeth. "But I guess also with puberty-"

"And maintaining your image."

"Rukia, I swear to God-"

She mimicked zipping her lips closed.

"I was just trying to say that we were really mean to each other, in between defending one another and kind of thinking the other was okay. But then, with the Grand Fisher, you got nicer, and then you tried to save me from Byakuya, and then when you eventually came back when the goddamn arrancar showed up you were just... You."

One of her eyes narrowed. "So you're saying the reason we didn't get along as well as we do now at first was because I wasn't _nice_ enough?"

"No, because I was a prick too."

"Ichigo, where are you going with this?"

"I'm just trying to say... Even when we weren't totally friendly towards each other... You still suddenly became the most important thing to me, you know? We kept trying to save each other, the whole way... But I'd have tried to save you from the very beginning anyway. I think I always knew we were bonded to each other."

Her face relaxed as he made his speech, her eyes widening to full strength, Rukia-style cute hypnosis. And then they were suspicious again.

"Ichigo, I told you already. We are _not_ having sex on my Captain's desk."


	7. Chapter 7

A/N: Is revenge fanfiction a thing?

This one came to me when I was reading a slightly older fanfiction. You know the really good ones that suck you in, and then… they've been abandoned. Well this one was nice enough to come back to their abandoned fic a couple of years later to round it off with a lemon – but if anyone knows **Aileah** , the author of **What Binds Us Together** and can convince her to keep going then please fucking do. If not, read the fucking thing because it is Good Shit.

Anyways, with the end of that particular fic being (spoilers) that they finally sleep together and then he goes off to war, I was like, knowing Ichigo's shitty luck he'd come back to her having had a baby while he was away.

And thus, this was born. (I swear the next one shot will be less baby orientated, but parenting team IR is just peak and can only be challenged by gay dads Vikturi)

Also I had a fic that I never got even close to finishing which was IR as beauty and the beast and I am thisclose to starting that shit again just try and stop me

* * *

Ichigo Kurosaki was the Soul King.

 _Good for him_ , Rukia thought. _He deserves it._

And he kind of did. He'd been through the wringer. He'd had to fight a shit ton of people. His daily nap routine had been interrupted. He hadn't been able to just sit and read some Shakespeare while eating chocolate covered strawberries for some time.

So with the announcement that he was Soul King – because of course he would be, that important little shit – and would have to seal himself within the King's Realm for about a year while he became the lynchpin of the universe and stabilised it, something Rukia was _extremely_ shakey on the details about, no one was that surprised.

Or if they were then they didn't particularly show it. Byakuya Kuchiki had taken up the habit of huffing quietly, in an annoyed way, presumably at the knowledge that Ichigo now outranked him in both skill and nobility, but everyone had always figured he was destined for something great.

Ichigo himself, however, appeared to have thought he was destined for something a little closer to home.

And so, the day Yhwach died, or whatever it is he had done after he and Rukia had used their bankais together to fire some icy tensa zangetsu with world-endage potential, who the fuck knew, and Aizen had gotten a new chair, which he pretended to hate but secretly was quite fond of, Ichigo had been announced King and was told he'd have to leave the next morning. He then proceeded, since they had just had their inner worlds melded together into one and fought together and were now the closest two souls could be, to go Rukia's room in the still-standing Kuchiki manor, and sleep with her.

It had been beautiful. And awkward.

Incredibly, incredibly awkward.

At first, he'd gotten too excited by her hand on his junk over his pants while they'd been making out that he'd come too soon.

Then, while she was giving him a blow job to try and get things starting again, she'd gotten cramp in her jaw and had to ice it.

Then, eventually, they were both sufficiently aroused and naked and actually in bed, and it was just awkward. But beautiful. But awkward. False start when she felt her hymen tear and had to stop, then he'd started to move, and there were legs in the wrong places, and he'd gone to kiss her and they'd knocked foreheads. There was a point when he clearly wasn't sure what to do with his hands so he just held them up questioningly but too embarrassed to say the words. Then she'd started giggling because it was so ridiculous and then he had to pull out because he could feel her giggling around his dick and it was too much. All in all, it ended with Ichigo managing to come inside her and she, bright red and still laughing, had settled for just kissing him (and an obligatory high five for getting to the end of it without either being seriously maimed). There was a resolution that it would be better next time, when the Royal Realm was unlocked or whatever – when they saw each other in about a year.

He left the next morning after giving her a kiss on the forehead.

* * *

The first month was fine, absolutely fine. Sure, she was off her food a little bit. Who wasn't? They'd just fought a _war_. She was connected to another soul and he was in a different dimension.

And her missing time of the month was also stress-related, probably.

* * *

The next month was fine too. Of course she vomited her breakfast. Orihime Inoue should not be allowed near a frying pan.

* * *

So she'd missed another period. And she was still vomiting all the time. And she felt like shit. To be expected, frankly. She was just tired. She _was_ helping to rebuild the afterlife, you know.

* * *

"No."

"Yes."

"No."

"Rukia, yes. I'm telling you 'yes'. It's a blue plus. That means _pregnant_."

"I'm telling you, fuck off Renji. That means _go fuck yourself-_ hey don't take my wine you monster-"

* * *

Month five involved cold jelly on swollen bellies and listening to heartbeats and telling her brother.

Who, actually, wasn't _that_ offended by the thought of her having Ichigo's baby.

"… He'll be a prince. And then a Kuchiki King. He will bring great honour to the clan. I will have the other nobles send congratulations."

* * *

The next month saw her belly _pop_. The women you saw on TV with their perfectly round bumps and tiny torsos and skinny legs and perfect asses?

Not Rukia Kuchiki. She was swollen all over. She was told she looked adorable. She told people to move the fuck out of her way.

* * *

Renji would be the one to help her when she was in labour, it was decided.

"It's only two months away, Rukia," he would remind her with an excited smile, as if she was a fucking idiot who couldn't remember a simple date. "Two months and I'll be an uncle! Hey, you'll let me take the kid out with me to help pull chicks, right? I'm gonna get us matching leather biker jackets, cool uncle Renji will be their _favourite_ -" That bastard needed to stop cooing at her fat stomach.

* * *

Month eight was the worst month.

It suddenly hit home. A baby. No daddy. About 200 aunts and uncles, but no daddy. Her soulmate was the father to her child and he didn't even know.

She cried _all the time_. She stood in front of her squad, her entire squad, about a thousand soldiers all watching her on the podium while she did her announcements, and uncontrollably sobbed while telling them something about not challenging Squad 11 members to duels. No one could tell a word she was saying. Everyone looked alarmed.

* * *

Almost as soon as the last full month started, so did a lot of Braxton Hicks. All the time. All the fake contractions. So she stayed in bed and slept and watched movies and did paperwork and she was so fucking bored as she got bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger-

* * *

It wouldn't be the baby of Ichigo Kurosaki if it wasn't horrendously overdue.

"We'll induce labour tomorrow," Isane told her. "It's not safe to wait for you to begin labour naturally now it's three weeks over. The baby will have to come out and meet his mother!"

Which of course meant that she went into labour not two hours later.

Giving birth was never going to be her forte. She was four foot eight and her hips were still tiny, which meant a C-section, which meant not being able to feel anything below her breasts and Renji holding her hand while his face was way too close and she'd tell him to fucking move back a bit and he'd say, "it's nearly over, Rukia!" and she got spit in her eye.

* * *

Baby girl Kurosaki-Kuchiki was born at 3am and she weighed 6 and a half pounds. She had a full head of orange hair. Because of course she did.

She was endlessly wanting her mother's milk, because she was as demanding as her father.

She was five days old and had already worked out how to pout and use her eyes to get something because she was so cute, and it wouldn't be hard work otherwise.

She immediately fell asleep when her uncle Byakuya held her, and screamed whenever Renji got too close.

She was a month old and her eyes turned violet because she seemed determined to be the most outrageous baby who ever lived. Biker jacket and all.

She was two months old and she started smiling, much to everyone's delight but Rukia's. She seemed determined not to smile at her mother. Probably because her mother was refusing to give her a name until her father showed up, but whatever.

When she was two and a half months old, she met her daddy.

* * *

Being a newly-instated Captain with a new-born was probably the hardest thing Rukia Kuchiki would ever do.

Friday nights, that night of the week when work is over and everybody seems to want to celebrate having two days off, saw Rukia in bed, asleep by 9pm, with her baby in her crib right next to the bed.

So, when Rukia woke up at about half 11 one Friday evening, looking at the clock before rolling over to check on the baby girl, she about had a coronary when she saw the crib was empty.

She shot straight up in bed and was half an inch from throwing back her covers and screaming when she caught sight of the baby girl.

She was in her father's arms, and he was sat in the rocking chair on the other side of the room. He was holding her carefully, like he wasn't fully confident of what he was doing, and the moonlight from the open window falling on them both. Rukia could hear lieutenant Matsumoto cackling loudly outside as she walked back from the bar, but she was fairly sure that tonight wasn't one of those nights when Rangiku would drunkenly burst in demanding to hold the baby, so she put it out of her mind.

"Hey," she spoke, softly so she didn't startle him.

He looked up at her, and smirked. "Yo," he whispered, "what've you been up to, then?"

She smiled herself as she got up from her bed, walked across the room, and stroked the sleeping baby's head, not moving her eyes from his. "Oh, you know. This and that."


	8. Chapter 8

"It's huge." Her eyes bugged out.

He went pink. Very pink, more of a strawberry red. He coughed a little and tried to clear his throat.

"I, uh... sorry."

Rukia couldn't really hear what he was saying. She was more focused on what Ichigo's pants had just exposed.

"Is it too big?"

She'd always had a suspicion he wouldn't be small, but she hadn't thought he'd be quite this big.

"Ru-Rukia?"

She couldn't look away. It was like his dick had her hypnotised.

"If it's, uh... too big and you won't like it... I'll just... with my tongue instead? So you won't be uncomfortable..."

So thick...

"... Rukia?"

She finally heard him, and looked up. He looked completely ashamed of himself. She'd caught his eyes when she looked up, but he immediately looked away, down at the floor, anywhere but her, and made a move to cover himself up. He looked so cute and happy before, excited, but his face had completely fallen. He'd taken on that clenched jaw look he got when he was frustrated with himself.

So she snapped out of her penis-induced trance for long enough to grab him by the back of his neck, shove her tongue down his throat and pull down his pants as fast as she physically could. She started to edge forward on the counter of the bathroom he'd placed her on, at the garden party that the seated members of the squads were attending. But they were all drunk, and the bathrooms were nice enough to be individual and for no one to hear her fuck her boy-toy boyfriend for the first time after a couple of glasses of champagne.

"Rukia-" he struggled slightly against her extremely insistent kiss, "you don't have to- if you think it-" she put her hand around his dick, "ugh, it'll- it'll hurt-"

She released his lips and started to suck on his right earlobe. "Will you just shut up and fuck me with your perfect cock?"

He quickly acquiesced.


	9. Chapter 9

Okay so I updated not six hours ago, but I'm just updating as The World Is Not Enough comes on ITV4. So I'm there watching James Bond, and I think, ichigo as a secret agent. Then I'm like, babe, you didn't become a ridiculously fucking extra feminist for that kinda gender conformity like kubo tite. And ya know, I was right. Good going, me.

* * *

"You're a secret agent?!"

"Would you keep it down, for god's sake," she hissed back at me.

This was not how I saw my weekend panning out.

So I'd finally broken up with my fiancée. She was beautiful, but had no personality and, frankly, what personality she had had become centred solely around me. There was a distinct sense of bunny boiler around her. But I did it. I knocked back two giant glasses of scotch, broke up with her, went into work the next day, and then went out to drink some more to forget about Orihime.

And there I was, a bit tipsy, stood by the bar in some club, watching Chad kiss some girl in the corner, watching Grimmjow grind against some girl on the dance floor, and watching Renji try to chat up four girls in a group at once, when she came up to me, took the grey goose on ice out of my hand, and downed it.

She was the hottest girl I'd ever seen in my life. The first popstar I got a hard on over, the first pornstar I got myself off to, the first girlfriend two years older than me who took my virginity, pretty much any woman I'd ever seen, she made all of them look inferior.

She had these purple eyes, and these big waves in her long, black hair, and this dark violet sequinned dress with a deep v and skinny straps that came to right below her ass. Her legs were curvaceous but petite, her waist was tiny with flared hips, her breasts were small but perfectly perky, and her neck slender. She looked like a barbie. Seriously. Nobody looks like that in real life.

I want to see her black stilettos wrapped around my neck while I had my tongue in her pussy, but I knew, even as she took my drink out my hand, there was no way she would go for me.

She had other plans.

She had smiled at me, this cheeky smile that was the kind a girl usually gave you right before she put your dick in her mouth because she knew you were at her mercy. Then she'd ordered another drink without taking her eyes off me, and leaned over the bar, letting me take in her backless dress, so low that if I leaned just a little I could see the top of the crack of her ass.

I didn't realise at the time that I was bait, or whatever. That I was being used to throw people off her scent. That to her, I was just a dick she could use for the evening. I just thought she was ridiculously hot and I wanted to get as far into her pants as I could.

I now know that, as I was wondering whether she was the type to let me put it in her ass (because she really was just that hot), she was actually more focused on the members of an oil tycoon's terrorist cell who were positioned by the door, looking for a woman in a white suit and tight bun they were following, and that she'd stolen the dress from a drunk girl getting it given to her doggie style in the alley outside by her boyfriend, and had just shaken her hair out of the bun in the toilets.

Anyway, what this all accumulated in was me taking her back to my apartment and fucking her for a solid five hours (and yes, she was the type to let a stranger put it in her ass), and her being going by 6am when I woke up dehydrated and a vibrating bed - her iPhone was under my pillow.

Apparently this isn't a regular thing. Secret agents don't usually forget phones with world-saving information saved on them. When I eventually handed it back to her, she went incredibly red and stuttering, so I gathered she was as into me as I was into her.

But anyway, her phone was ringing, and I answered it, and it was her secret agent boss, but I didn't know it was her secret agent boss, and there was an incredibly awkward pause before he put me on hold for a few minutes, and then asked me to go to some docks on the edge of the city.

So I'm at these docks, right, and then I hear a gun shot, and then the Super Hot Chick With The Purple Eyes And Tight Pussy Who Let Me Fuck Her In The Ass (the name Renji gave her when he called to ask where the hell I'd gone last night while I drove to the docks), wearing an all black catsuit and holding some handgun that looks like it's on steroids yells my name, and drags me behind some metal containers by the scruff of the neck of my sweatshirt.

It's like, 6:30am at this point and I haven't had any coffee. The plan had been to find Super Hot Chick, take her to breakfast, and then convince her to let me fuck her again, and then make her hold off on cumming until she agreed to marry me.

Instead I'm in the middle of a fucking shoot out. Instead of having my brains screwed out, they're going to be blown out.

A gunshot ricochets off the top of the metal container above us.

"Who the fuck are you?!" I ask, and she replies that she's a secret agent.

It's not what I'd have guessed she did. Maybe a yoga instructor. Maybe a sex instructor. Maybe a super high class prostitute. Maybe one of those incredibly high-brow office jobs where she dresses in sharp suits and orders people around and makes million dollar deals by letting men blow their loads on her incredibly perfect ass.

Nope. She makes men her bitches.

That's what they should call female secret agents. Male-bitch-makers. I watched her run out from behind our cover and wrestle a man twice my weight to the ground and shoot him dead through the chest before scrounging back next to me.

"Do you know how to fire a gun?" She asks, cocking a perfect eyebrow at me.

"No," my voice cracks, "I'm a real estate agent."

I'm a good real estate agent, by the way, mansions and million dollar sea-front flats. But she frowns at me and parts her plump lips in confusion and I recognise now isn't the time to rattle off my portfolio.

A guy yells in Russian in the distance, and she shakes it off.

"Would you like to learn, or would you like to die?"

To be perfectly honest, I am not pro-guns. I think guns are bad. It goes against my moral compass.

But you have to understand how hot she was.

So I take the gun she hands me, and she quickly teaches me how to shoot, but I'm thinking more about how her hands had looked wrapped around my dick last night, so I'm not sure how much I took in. I was so completely useless that it was comical.

Anyway, she explains her strategy, and I end up running across these deserted, disgusting docks while there's a gun fight going on between her and about fifteen other guys, and she's about to catch up to me on my left when I see a guy with a shot gun about to actually fucking kill her.

Nobody's gonna kill Super Hot Chick on my watch. I've fucking claimed her. There's a bit of my cum stuck in the side of her hair she hadn't noticed in the must-have-been ten minutes she had get dressed and leave my place this morning.

So I kill a guy. With my gun. Straight through his head.

She stops, stock still, in the middle of the boardwalk, and turns to me slowly.

"... you just killed a billionaire oil tycoon."

"... sorry?"

Her face is blank and her lips have parted again which makes me think of when she was sucking on my dick. She's looking at me like I'm certifiably insane. I figure I should roll with it.

So I blurt out, "do you wanna go for coffee with me?"

There's literally a dead guy in an incredibly expensive looking navy suit with his brains splattered across the wooden planks between us and I've asked her for coffee. It's not an appropriate reaction.

Neither is her's.

"Okay," she says, shrugging. She steps up to the dead guy, riffles through his pockets until she produces a USB stick, which she pockets. I walk her back to my car, give her a spare gym hoodie on the backseat, and she stashes her gun in my glove compartment.

We go to Starbucks. I give her her phone, and she quietly explains that it's not good form for secret agents to leave their phones in the beds of their one night stands. I try to come out with a suave line about how it's a good thing I'm not a one night stand, but I'm so nervous because she's really fucking hot that I call it a 'one stand night' and she bursts out laughing in my face.

I ask her if she wants to go back to my apartment, and she smiles and says no.

"I don't sleep with a guy after a first coffee date."

"You slept with me after I met you in a bar."

"That was for work. You have to try to get to know me without imagining me doing something depraved to your genitalia before I actually make an effort when I'm fucking you."

My jaw drops a little, but I recover. "You weren't making an effort?"

She smirks, "not at all."

I take a deep swig of my black coffee before looking up at her. And then I ask her about herself. She went to university, she's an artist, she can sing and play eight instruments, she knows fourteen languages, she dances, she has an incredible shot, she's a black belt, she can quote Nietzsche. When she smiles, a true, true smile when I (only half jokingly) tell her I might be in love with her, she is far more beautiful than she is hot, and is better than me in every single way, but she's still sat with me. Her phone has been ringing silently nonstop, but she turned it face down and she's still talking to me.

A little later, she's riding me like a horse, putting in effort that makes me want to cum five seconds in, when I realise the most important thing I didn't ask the secret agent who put her rabbit-emblazoned gun under my pillow.

She flicks her sex-hair over her shoulder like a popstar, and winks and smiles at me from where I'm gasping for breath and control beneath her.

"Kuchiki. Rukia Kuchiki."


	10. Chapter 10

I wrote this while I watched the Hobbit, but that has nothing to do with this. Just thought you might want to know. The inspo was actually Britney, because she's flawless. Basically on her last tour, she brought a guy on stage and handcuffed him to a stripper pole, et voila, this fic. Whilst I am apparently currently a cauldron of AU oneshot ideas, if you have an idea that you would like me to write to see Ichigo and Rukia act out and it is in line with my delicate feminist sensibilities, I'll write it. But in any case, I hope you enjoy this. Because lemon. And actually it's my first lemon. So uh. We'll see. It's probably also my last. Lolaggedon.

* * *

I saw him prowl the pit between the stage and the crowd, keeping his eyes at the people at the barrier as I threw my body to the beat. I flicked my gaze forward to my mark as I went into a back handspring, concentrating on landing on the five inch stilettos attached to my thigh-high leather boots. My stage outfits were ridiculous, and as I turned my back to the crowd in a dance break and saw my own backing dancers' leotards and matte black Adidas trainers, I was incredibly envious of my old days. I turned front again, and someone handed me purple-gem encrusted microphone. I was singing some pop eurotrash song about finding myself on a club dance floor, and ignoring the guy staring at me from the bar.

It was ironic, because for the past hour of my show I'd been trying to catch the eye of the security guard in front of me but, like at every show, and every time he was in some way responsible for me, he ignored me.

I hit a high note, and pulled my leg straight up next to my head for emphasis as I walked across the stage. He didn't even look up. I was in my bejewelled underwear and leather boots dragging my legs up practically behind my ears and he didn't even notice me.

I thought I wasn't that bad. I wasn't ugly, I didn't think. I was a good dancer, and that was my crowning feature. I was an okay singer - good enough for people to get through a record without it grating too much on your nerves. For a 5 foot woman with a relatively flat ass but who squatted with her trainer every opportunity, I wasn't that bad.

So it was extremely confusing that whenever I said 'hello' to a member of my security team, he completely ignored me. Very confusing.

He was very cool. I'd seen his resumé. Black belt, kendo, wrestling, you couldn't get past him if he didn't want you to. He was very dedicated to his fitness and job. If he had to accompany me as part of my team to an event, he had this Top Gun-type black leather jacket and a pair of Ray Bans and some dark wash jeans and a very imposing attitude that made me get a little wet in the panties when he had to wrap an arm around me and practically carry me under his arm to nearest door when the paps were especially bad.

He'd been on my team from two years now. I wouldn't say I was in love because we'd never held a conversation - and I swear I wouldn't say I was in love once we had. That isn't the sole prerequisite of my love. I'd need at least a smile.

As I ducked under the stage for my final costume change into this stupid black crystal embellished leotard that was essentially a bikini connected by strings with a thong for the butt, I wondered if I should just go for it. Really pounce on him. Because now was the time to do it.

So I did.

"Now is the time of the evening where we get a handsome volunteer from the audience!" I'd had all sorts of people on this stage. I may have been straight, but that didn't mean I was gonna deprive some cute girl of me grinding up on her if that's what she wanted. Every gender, sexuality, race, I'd had a volunteer up on this stage and done this to them. Now, it was him.

"Hmmm, maybe over here?" I pretended to survey the crowd to my right, and did the same on the left, pretending to be indecisive. Funnily enough, I'd already picked my mark.

"How about this fine gentleman?" I gestured to Ichigo Kurosaki, my hot security guard, who was stood about ten feet in front of me. He stood stock still, and then slowly turned his head towards me in disbelief. His face was blank, and his eyes were narrowed in suspicion.

The crowd were much more enthusiastic once the camera focused on his face and he was projected onto the three huge screens above us.

"He said yes!" I yelled, despite him not opening his mouth. My dancers usher him up onto the stage, and he's fully glaring at me by this point. I take him by his arm, kiss him on the cheek to the delight of the audience, and lead him over to the black acrylic chair one of my guys has placed in the middle of my dance floor. I push on his shoulder to make him sit, accept the diamanté-encrusted handcuffs from a dancer, and attach him to the chair.

I step back to observe the damage, and he looks like he's wishing death upon me.

Go hard or go home, I guess.

A slower beat starts, and the crowd starts to wolf whistle as I start to dance, on my own, for him.

This part is usually the most embarrassing. I'm usually painfully aware that I'm exotically dancing for a complete stranger who's usually more interested in trying to get the attention of their friends to make sure they're taking a picture and 15,000 people look on. Not with Ichigo. Instead, I'm painfully aware that with every roll of my hips, every twist of my neck, every graze of my hands against my body, he's staring right at my eyes. I look away, being as seductive as my choreographers could teach me, and when I look back at him, he's still focused on my eyes.

It's sort of charming, although he does look like he's condemning me to the fires of hell while trying to calm down the hell of a boner I can see in his jeans. A brief thought of undoing his fly in case it's chafing him comes to mind, but I dispel it. He probably doesn't want his dick out on stage.

I spin slowly and turn my back to him. I part my legs, lean over, and grab my ankles, shoving my butt right in his face. There's a brief moment where I suddenly regret not wearing any form of tights this evening - I could probably done for sexual harassment at this point, considering he can probably see my whole cooch, but he doesn't start yelling and screaming that he's blind. That's a good sign.

I spin back around to face him, and lean in for the final part of the choreography. I say a silent prayer in my head, before I lean in for a kiss.

The non-disclaimer the volunteer signs says that no tongue must be used in this kiss, but he immediately shoves his in my mouth, and I immediately try to force it back in his mouth and follow with my own, and suddenly we're having a bit of an oral argument that I have to be the one to pull away from to make my next cue.

I undo his handcuffs, and twirl them around my finger and face the crowd. "A big hand for my gorgeous security detail!" I don't know where I get the courage from, but I grab his butt in an exaggerated motion as soon as he stands. He doesn't even look at me now: he's waiting for his opportunity to escape, and as soon as I've kissed him on the cheek again, he stalks away.

I'm slightly disappointed, but I briefly consider what I could've been expecting, sigh, and shrug it off. There's two songs left, and there's not much left I can do but throw myself into them. Kurosaki doesn't return to his place in front of the stage.

As the confetti finally begins to fall and I introduce my dancers and band for their applause, I'm a little relieved. I've spent the last fifteen minutes winding myself up over a guy instead of doing my job, so bouncing around and singing and twirling in a crown covered in long white ribbons like I'm an ice princess is cathartic.

As always, I'm the last off the stage as I say goodnight. The song hasn't even finished when, as soon as I'm out of sight of the crowd, I'm grabbed by unidentifiable hands and hauled into a tiny alcove to the side.

I see his bright eyes for a second, looking intense and angry, before his mouth is back on mine and we're arguing with our tongues again. It escalates quickly; he palms my breasts and I finally get to undo his pants when I feel him start poking me in the stomach.

I hadn't particularly envisioned what our first time would be like. Any time at all I'd been hoping for. He still surprised me though. I guess I must've pissed him off more than I realised by dragging him up on stage.

Once I'd undone his pants, my song still blaring from the speakers above us to the huge crowd, he'd obviously decided I'd crossed a line and took his hands off my chest. He replaced them on my thighs, and pulled them up around his waist while I pulled out his dick. He detached from my mouth to look my in the eye and glare at me again. At this point I realised that our first time together would not be beautiful love making. It would be angry fucking. I was being punished.

But god, it was good.

Suddenly, my back was against an equipment box, hidden from view by black curtains, and he was in me, hard and fast. I ground against him, but he held me in place with his hands so I could do nothing but shove my hands in his hair and fight his tongue. It seemed to go on forever, but as the beats finally faded, it could only have been four or five minutes. I'd wound him up so much in my dance.

It wasn't quite enough for me though. It never was. I took a hand out of his hair to sneak it down to my clit, but he grabbed my wrist before it could reach its destination and held it fast against the wall, and went harder, faster, deeper as the crowd started screaming, 'Rukia' outside, hoping for an encore. He started suckling my neck while I moaned his name over and over.

I started begging, I think; he must've known I was close and chose not to help me along. I took my other hand out of his hair too, so he wrapped his arms around my waist and went shorter and faster, and as my hands just nearly reached their goal, he came. I felt everything, and still I didn't finish.

I thought he might be gentlemanly, but I guess he must have been really pissed off at me, because he dropped me to my wobbling feet, and backed off a step to survey the damage that he'd made to my appearance. My leotard was still pulled to one side to expose myself, as was half of one breast, and my long hair was probably a rat's nest. My lips felt swollen, and my cheeks on fire so they must have been really red. He seemed happy with himself, looking at me like that while his dick was still out of his pants and half hard.

He wasn't getting away with it. I was so close.

So I moved my hands down and finally, finally reached my clit.

He was stunned for a moment when I started to play with myself, just stood there making eye contact while my hands were moving down below, and then he moved into action. It had only been a few seconds, but he surged forward, grabbed my hands, and turned my around to face the equipment box, my body flush. He shoved his crotch against my ass, and shoved his own two hands down. His mouth became intent upon giving me a hickey while two fingers slipped in me, and the other hand started rubbing.

It didn't take long. I came on his hands, and he stopped my whimpering with his mouth. I went a little boneless, and he had to extract his hands and hold me up by my waist while he kissed me as deeply as he could. As he pulled away, the crowd started to quieten down as the lights went up.

I squeaked a little when I met his eyes - still intense, but not angry anymore.

"Hi," I said, as eloquently as I could.

He smirked just a little. "Yo."


	11. Chapter 11

There was a couple requests - one was ichigo vs fanboys which I am currently working on but I have a huge amount of ideas to try to compress within 3-4K words so it's coming along slowly! This one, however, just sort of flowed out extremely quickly, so thank you jobananasan! It's funny, because I've fairly recently played through the original tomb raiders, and it's only through your suggestion my brain conjured this, so I'm quite indebted to you.

It has been a VERY long time since I watched the movies, but I am aware that Daniel Craig is like a love interest? I can't consciously remember the storylines though, so hopefully I haven't stolen ideas. It's almost like a tomb raider/Indiana jones cross-over, maybe. The first two scenarios are the actual storylines of Tomb Raider 2 & 3, and there was something about a clock in one of the movies, but this may be terrible. Please review if you enjoy, and review if you don't enjoy as well, because I adore reading them. Even if it's 3 words. I crave validation apparently.

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I first met Ichigo Kurosaki in a monastery in Tibet. We'd both been searching for a dagger that some Italian mafia had been intent on getting hold of. Why anyone would want to turn into a dragon is beyond me, but whatever.

As it turned out, despite us being in the same place at the same time, he was quite a few steps ahead of me. He'd already scoped out the Chinese tomb where the dagger would need to be placed. I'd gotten captured by the mafia and holed up in an oil rig for about a week. Unfortunately, he'd heard of me, and he'd heard about this rather embarrassing escapade.

"Well, well, well. If it isn't Rukia Kuchiki."

You'd think, being trained in gymnastics and karate and all the rest of it that I would be able to hold my balance when someone gave me a shock. Apparently I couldn't. The fairly thin rock wall I'd been darting along was icy, and I completely lost my footing. It wasn't the kind of slow fall where you can correct yourself, rather the fast ground-coming-at-you, already winded before you hit the ground, fall.

Kurosaki, maybe he'd planned it and decided he wanted to be heroic. Whatever he'd tried to come off as when he caught me in his arms and held me like I was his bride, I was a little too shocked to recognise.

"And here I thought you were supposed to be the best tomb raider on earth. Do you fall off a lot of tall fixtures?"

I had something for this, I swear, but it had just started snowing again and some flakes had gotten up my nose in the fall, so rather than an excellent comeback, I had to bring my hands to my nose and sneeze the most pitiful, squeaky little sneeze you'd ever heard.

It didn't quite blend in with my whole image, considering the sawn-off shotgun and AK-47 strapped to my back, the uzis on my hips and the pistols strapped to my ribs. He obviously agreed, because the orange-haired prick laughed this extremely charming laugh, and gracefully set me down, feet first, and held his hand against the small of my back as if to make sure I wouldn't lose my balance. Bastard.

He reached to my face, and picked up an eyelash on the tip of his pointer finger.

"Make a wish," he smirked at me.

I punched him in the nose with a gloved hand, hit the switch to my right to ignite the fiery traps ahead of us, backflipped over the closest and ducked under the fake trapdoor to a room below.

I got to China a few days later, without the dagger, to find a note on the tomb door:

'Hope you're having a nice vacation in the Far East, Kuchiki! I've done your work for you, so you can go and enjoy yourself. Love, your secret admirer.'

He'd also presumptuously left his phone number on the bottom of the note. I tore up the note and threw the remains over the side of the bridge to the bottom of the gorge below. I stamped my combat booted feet all the way home to the Kuchiki mansion, and stewed for a few weeks.

The next time I ran into him, we were in Area 51. We were both searching for a meteorite artefact. The US army appeared to be aware that they may be expecting visitors because they'd booby-trapped the shit out of the place. Luckily, these were not four thousand year old traps that were ridiculously complex to turn off. Unluckily, the rather rudimentary designs of the traps meant that you couldn't exactly turn them off. There's no style in the art of traps with soldiers.

This is how I came to find Ichigo Kurosaki, hands over his head, rather distractingly topless in the heat, surrounded by armed soldiers pointing their rifles at him as he was stuck in the Nevada quicksand.

I didn't even know his name at this point, and, usually, I'd sabotage other tomb raiders that I encountered. Maybe it was his ripped chest, I'm not sure, but I crept to the group. I broke one guard's neck, vaulted off his back to the soldier next to him while pulling out a pistol, shot the two across from me, and threw the guard who's body I was straddling towards the remaining soldier. He accidentally shot his friend, and then I shot him in the head.

Kurosaki was glaring at me.

"I had that under control."

I snorted while riffling through dead soldiers' pockets. "Of course you did."

He held his arms in an exasperated gesture. "I totally did."

I produced a green keycard, and subtly put it in my back pocket, hoping he hadn't noticed. "And how, pray tell, were you expecting to get out of this?"

He smirked his annoying smirk again, and in a physics-defying move, threw his hand into the quicksand and immediately produced a bullwhip. He caught it around a metal bar above him, and swung himself out, and stood directly next to me. His muscles had been extremely distracting during this display.

"Like that."

I put a hand on my bare hip, skin exposed as I'd removed my t-shirt and was left in just a sports bra and tiny shorts, and rolled my eyes. "And how were you going to avoid being shot in the back while you were getting yourself out of that?"

He furrowed his brow, confused and beaten. I started to smirk back at him in victory, but he stepped forward, right into my space, and leaned towards me.

"You know I'd have gotten out of it."

I cocked an eyebrow. "Do I, now?" It was hot, in more ways than one, and this fucking base had thrown far too much at me today for me to want to start putting up with this douchebag. He seemed intent on putting up with me, though.

He stepped forward again until our stomachs and hips were flush, and I couldn't exactly think. He trailed his right hand down my left arm with a feather touch, watching it's movement before he returned to my eyes. He was pretty hypnotising.

"Oh yeah," he grumbled lowly, and I could feel the reverberations in my own chest, "just like I'll get out of this one."

I didn't have time to be confused by his words, because his left hand suddenly clasped my neck and he was viciously kissing me, while his right hand grabbed my ass tight, pulling the cheeks apart in such a way that I nearly fell over as I lost the feeling in my legs.

It was over as quickly as it began. He suddenly drew back, smirked, kissed me on the nose, then pulled his bullwhip back from its pouch and launched himself over the metal pole he'd used before to throw himself onto the guard post above us.

I was stunned for about five seconds after he was out of sight before I realised what had happened. I knew before I even touched my back pocket - the green keycard was gone.

I was still better. Four weeks later, after I buried the four artefacts I'd procured and killed an evil scientist in the tomb in Antartica, I left him a note on the metal door in the underground tunnel that I was sure he would find. I fumbled through my back pack, found the bright red lipstick I'd packed, applied it, and then kissed the bottom of the note before tacking it to the door.

'Closed for business due to new management. Love, R.K.'

The third time I met Ichigo Kurosaki, I learnt his name.

We were at an auction in London. There was a clock with some kind of key in it - I don't particularly know. The vagueness of the information around it was what alerted me, and I knew I'd have to get it. I was all dolled up for the occasion, my hair in a French twist, my eyes lined black, wearing a strapless, fully-pearl embellished corseted gown that weighed a ton and fell all the way to the floor. I looked pretty impressive, I must admit, and I was on the upper tier of the auction house, in a box another noble had loaned out for the evening to my family and mostly out of view.

I noticed his hair straight away amongst the crowd below. I wasn't surprised when he was the first to bid on the clock, but I was when I realised how high he was bidding, and admittedly startled when he won the damn thing. I asked the box's assigned butler who the gentleman was so that I may congratulate him, and he soon returned with the information that his name was Uryuu Ishida. That was all I needed: I forwarded the name to my tech guy, who then messaged with a full background check. This was even more startling - he was a clothing designer, and his father was the owner of a prestigious Tokyo hospital.

I glanced down to where I could see him in the crowd, and noticed I could just make out a hand gun under his arm in a holster when he slightly reached forward to sign for his item. I wouldn't have pegged him for a clothing designer, but when I thought about it, it was a pretty good cover.

Whoever he was, I had a plan. The background check had included the hotel room he'd booked for the night.

This was where he found me about two hours later. I wasn't wearing the gown anymore - it cost a shit-ton, and I'd be pissed if it got ripped. Instead, I was wearing an an extremely low-cut, extremely lacy, extremely see-through, and extremely crotchless body suit. There was a bottle of champagne on the bedside table with two glasses, and a couple of candles lit, and me, splayed out in the middle of the silken sheets. When I heard him open the hotel room door, I propped my back against the headboard, rested my forearms on the pillows, and crossed one leg over the bent other, so he could just see the cut out of the suit on my bottom.

I was very glad to see he looked surprised when he came into the bedroom.

"Well, I'm glad I didn't take that girl at the bar up on her offer."

I smiled when I bit my finger and he undid his bow tie and pulled it off. I didn't answer him.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, removing his tuxedo jacket and putting it on the back off the dressing chair in the corner.

I leant forward, leaned on my arms and pushed my breasts together. "I have a proposition for you."

He smirked and undid his top buttons. "I'm sure you do."

I went up onto my knees and ran the fingers of my left hand through my hair, and then trailed them down my neck and down my cleavage, where they rested fingering the lace. "Why are we competing?" I furrowed my brows ever so slightly, and cocked my head to one side. "We both want the same things." I went onto all fours, and crawled towards him where he stood at the foot of the bed. "Wouldn't it be better if we worked together?" I sat back up, and tugged him forward with two fingers in his belt.

He got very turned on very quick. "That does sound like a good plan." He clenched his jaw wickedly.

My smile got bigger. "I'm glad you agree, Uryu."

He frowned again, then realisation dawned on his face. He chuckled. "Fake name."

I positioned my face into one of understanding also, and put my lips into an 'o' shape he couldn't take his eyes off.

"Then it's nice to meet you, Mr..."

"Ichigo. Ichigo Kurosaki." He stood confidently, and put his hands into his trouser pockets. "It's a pleasure to make a deal with you, Ms Kuchiki."

"Shake on it?"

He smiled back, and held out his hand.

"Uh uh," I admonished. "Down here..." I reached for his hand, and lowered it my the cut out of my suit, forcing him to go down on his knees in the process. I sat back down on my butt and leaned back on the bed while he started fingering my clit. "That's a good boy..."

He wasn't a boy, that's for sure. He was obviously pretty experienced. He had one hand working on my clit, and another working its way slowly around my entrance until I was panting and whining, and a weaker woman would be begging for it. It was when my right hand started palming my breast that he snuck his finger in, followed by another, and quickly found my g-spot, creating enough friction while he rubbed my clit that I was nearly crying. I was in deep further than I realised when he removed his fingers from my pussy, and I sat halfway upright.

I whined, "no, please" at him without consciously wanting to do so, but he just smirked that extremely hot smirk at me, and lowered his head, his tongue invading me while his wet fingers entered my ass and his other hand kept at my clit. It seemed to go on for forever, despite how much he was working over me. My hands ended up in his hair as his right hand rubbed diligently and just the right amount of gentle at the top, his left scissored my ass eliciting such ridiculous pleasure, and his tongue got fully acquainted with my insides, rubbing and sucking.

Eventually, I gushed for the first time, and all over his face, but he looked pleased as he pulled away. I didn't really have the energy to be embarrassed. He reached down and undid his fly, pulling his underwear down his thighs a little and pulling out his extremely hard dick. If I edged off the bed and laced my thighs over his, he could be in me in seconds.

I smiled at him, this weak but happy smile and he smiled back. I leaned in and kissed him, tasting myself on his lips and tongue, stroked the hair on the nape of his neck and then looked straight into his eyes.

"Sorry about this, baby."

He looked confused for a second before I punched him in the back of the neck and he went out like a light, slumped against my legs.

I got him off me, and laid him flat on the floor on his side. I grabbed the long black coat I'd stashed under the dressing chair and tied it around my waist, and searched through his tux jacket for the slip of paper that was the proof of purchase I'd need to collect the clock.

I did feel bad for the guy - that was undoubtedly the best orgasm I'd ever had, and I credit that as the reason I was still feeling soft and squishy enough to give him a kiss on the cheek before I left.

A second before I opened his hotel room door, there was a knock and a porter stood there holding a large box. Perfect timing.

I exchanged the proof of purchase for the box, explaining that the new owner couldn't come to the door as he was otherwise occupied. My messy hair and flushed face was all the alibi I needed, and he nodded knowingly, handing over the clock. I snuck out after him a couple of minutes later, and got straight in the car waiting outside, and straight from there to the Kuchiki jet waiting for me on the runway at Heathrow.

I wasn't home for twelve hours before I met Ichigo Kurosaki for the fourth time.

It was around 3am when the alarms for the underground vaults sounded in my bedroom. I'd stashed the clock there as soon as I'd arrived, and hadn't exactly banked on someone being so desperate to get it that they'd track it down at the Kuchiki mansion way on the outskirts of Tokyo but I must've been wrong. Someone had disabled the gate's proximity detectors, and there were already a shit ton of people and dogs in my gardens when I crept from my bed to the window in the dark to check.

My brother was going to be fucking pissed I realised as I saw a guy with a machete hack down a branch of a Sakura tree. Bastards.

I didn't have time to think about that though, as someone's hand suddenly went over my mouth.

"Don't scream."

I huffed indignantly and pulled his hand away. "What the fuck are you doing here?!"

Kurosaki's bright amber eyes twinkled at me where the little light from the outside lamps hit them. "Saving your behind. Unlike you, I keep the deals I make."

"Oh please, we didn't even shake on it properly!"

"I fucked you in the ass with my fingers while my tongue was in your pussy, that was us shaking on it!"

"And where was my hand?!"

"In my fucking hair, I have a bald patch you bitch!"

I scoffed just as I heard the grand front doors slammed open.

"Now isn't the time to be arguing," I told him, and he shook his head at me like he was exasperated.

I stormed across my bedroom to the door next to my ensuite, and entered the code on the keypad beside it. I had to go back over to him and grab his arm, and then drag him through, slamming the steel reinforced door behind me just I had people coming into my bedroom.

My personal gun vault was a godsend, and I whipped my negligee over my head and pulled on the full black catsuit, zipping it up to my neck with no underwear on. Kurosaki enjoyed this, unnoticed. I sighed.

"What guns do you have?"

He had a single handgun and his bullwhip. I swore at him, pulled a flash bomb off the wall, and quickly threw it in my bedroom to incapacitate the assassins inside.

"Why don't you take a second to think before you start a rescue mission, you doofus," I armed myself to the teeth, huge automatics strapped all over me, and pulled on my knee high boots.

"I've managed this far," he smirked at me.

"It's a wonder how."

He fully smiled at me, approached me, grabbed my ass with both hands, and shoved his tongue in my mouth for a quick, deep kiss.

"For luck. I'd fuck you in your gun room, but we don't have the time."

I pushed him away, and handed him another automatic off the wall. "Survive, and you can do whatever the fuck you want to me."

He smiled, and before I could move, grabbed my hand and shook it. "Deal".

We put our night visors on, and I threw another flash bomb in my room for luck, waited a couple seconds, and then we began.

He was better than I thought he'd be with that bullwhip. It was slightly off putting, because I'd think I had someone positioned, and the next thing they're being thrown with the whip around their necks across the staircase. His shot with a gun wasn't so good; despite all those muscles, he didn't seem to have as much experience and couldn't quite handle the recoil, but that was more than trainable. What was even more distracting, however, is that he seemed to think it was funny to grab my ass or give me a quick kiss every couple of minutes. His smirk didn't leave his face until a big guy pistol whipped me when I didn't realise he could move so fast, and Ichigo took it upon himself to beat him until there was blood on the marble floor of my entrance hall. He then picked me up on the floor, set me on my feet, kissed my forehead and handed me my gun back from where I'd dropped it, and I went back to work.

I have no idea how many we took out when we eventually fought our way to the vaults. We faced the doors, looked at each other, and sighed in relief when there was another gun shot behind us. My eyes widened as I searched him for a wound and he did the same, but there was none. We turned.

My brother was at the end of the hall, holding up a handgun, in a silk dressing gown and pajamas, and the man with the machete who'd cut the tree from earlier just a few feet from Ichigo and I.

The butler took his gun from him, and exchanged it with a teacup and saucer. My brother took a sip, and glared at us, and then left without a word.

Thankfully, we'd survived. The staff, used to this sort of thing, were cleaning up bodies as Ichigo and I strolled hand in hand up to my bedroom, and I made good on my deal. He ended up having a lovely time bending me over and fucking me under the shower in my wet room.

He then spent the next morning bringing me breakfast in bed, and suggesting nicknames for our tomb raiding team, until I made him do the thing with his tongue again to shut him up.

And, despite the many, many years we raided tombs together before we retired, I never could get him to use his whip on me when we were in bed together.


	12. Chapter 12

Yo. Here's the corporate AU as requested by Ichiruki 4vr, and rightly inspired by Tituba3's classic Odalisque. If you haven't read it, you are missing out (while I'm recommending, go read the recently completed Bleach Emblem by Saij Spellhart because it is to. Die. For.). When I first started writing this, it was the angstiest thing I'd ever written - Ichigo and Rukia sleeping together and her falling in love with him and him ignoring her for a while - and I may return to that storyline eventually, but I found it difficult to write so instead I rewrote it and turned it into this (admittedly odd) fluff-fest. I'm not going to lie, I have NO IDEA where any of this came from, the corporate bit only facilitates my weird idea, and it is CHEESY TO THE POINT OF CRINGEWORTHY, but I've been having a bad few weeks so I wanted to do something just so cheerful and cute to make me feel better and this is what I produced, so please read and review and let me know if this is so strong it's blue cheese. But it's sort of nice in a way, because to me, I felt like I was introducing Ichigo to what I thought should have been, but you'll see. Please send requests and I will make them slightly less cheesy and weird. Maybe.

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The two heads of marketing at the popular but expensive underwear multinational company did not get on. In fact, they had only met each other three times previously. Once had been in a strategy meeting, and it had ended in a rather heated disagreement. The second had been in a boardroom meeting, and had ended with an all out screaming match. The third had been at a company gala. They'd drank too much, gone back to his and had sex, and he'd woken up alone the next morning. All the money in his wallet had gone and there was a passive aggressive note on his desk explaining that she'd taken it to buy the morning after pill because he'd been out of condoms.

This was around two years ago. Since this event, all communication between the two had been limited to secretaries messaging thinly veiled threats to one another from the two different cities their bosses worked in, and the marketing campaigns for women's lingerie and men's underwear were drastically different. The tones clashed: how could the lingerie shorts be advertising a strong, independent woman looking good for herself when the men's adverts focused on how to get the women in the lingerie by wearing the boxer briefs?

This, of course, was pissing off both the CEO and the CFO. Women of all sexualities were buying themselves the lingerie, enjoying the theme of empowerment, but were alienated from purchasing the male line if they had boyfriends or husbands. Straight men were buying the male line, and this consumer was split on buying the women's line if they did or didn't appreciate the feminist theme of the lingerie ads, but this was the sole consumer base.

As such, Ichigo Kurosaki's sales were down due to his marketing techniques compared to Rukia Kuchiki's.

This did not a happy man make when he wished he could tear the head of the rabbit-loving bitch who fucked like a Duracell bunny and had ruined every sexual encounter he had had with a woman since because they just weren't quite as good as she was.

So she was ruining his career and his sex life.

And today he was finally going to see that slut when she came from her building in Karakura to the main site in Tokyo where he worked so they could have a meeting with the CEO, an old guy called Yamamoto, the CFO Ukitake and a senior Director, Kyoraku. He was going to make her look like the absolute fucking stupid bitch she was, get her out of his system, then go out and find the nearest hot chick to fuck that he could, and then this depressing saga would be over.

And yet when he walked into the boardroom on that Friday evening in his dark grey work suit and white shirt, he realised belatedly that he'd matched his deep purple tie to the colour of her eyes, and only realised when she was staring right at him from her place at the other end of the table.

He managed to tear himself from his place in the doorway before he looked odd standing there for too long, and removed his eyes from the woman across the table from him as he shook his bosses' hands. He didn't approach her even as he saw her reach her own hand out, but saw her daintily move it back to her side when she realised he had no intention of taking it, and clench her fist twice before relaxing.

They sat, and he purposefully kept his eyes away from her.

As it turned out, he had no opportunity or courage to chew her out when he could feel her gaze on him intermittently throughout the meeting, and instead kept focussed on what his CEO was telling him - that they needed to work more coherently, they needed to communicate more, they needed to be in sync, and that to facilitate that, Ms Kuchiki would be setting up base in the Tokyo office building.

"You have got to be fucking kidding me."

He could barely get himself off because of this woman, other chicks thought he had some kind of erectile dysfunction, and now she was going to be right on his doorstep?!

"I assure you, Mr Kurosaki, we do not kid," Ukitake said, smiling warmly from his spot to Kuchiki's left. "We think this would be an excellent opportunity for Ms Kuchiki to spread her fundamentals and coordinate with your own brand of, uh, machoism in order to further the potential sales of both of your product lines, though particularly the men's lines. I'm sure you agree that this is an effective route to solve our problem?"

He sighed, leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. "I guess."

"Then it's settled!" Kyoraku raised his arms in excited victory. "I guess it's a good thing Ms Kuchiki moved into her office today, then!"

Ichigo rolled his eyes and lightly groaned, turning his head to the ceiling.

He contemplated throwing his head against the wall and ending it all when, about a few hours later, he found himself in Kuchiki's office, and still as totally confused as he'd ever been as the woman he was sure he hated stood there, holding the extremely lacy new season teddy in her hand.

"So, how do you think you would market this to your target audience, carrot top?"

What was more confusing and frustrating was that she had a playful smirk on her face and never moved her eyes from his as she fingered the scraps of white lace and silk in her hands. He was sure he hated her. He couldn't really get himself off without her there, but he was still pretty sure he hated her. He hated her pointed heels with the red sole, the black pencil skirt, the lavender blouse and buttoned suit jacket over flared hips she wore, the loose bits of hair that escaped her ponytail and framed her face.

He had been so sure he hated her.

So why was he stuttering when he told her he'd market it towards the male gaze?

Was it because she looked at him like he was pure dirt?

And she was now narrowing her huge fucking purple eyes at him like he'd really fucked her off?

"I think you've missed the point of why your sales are down."

Ichigo shot up from his seated position at his desk, slammed his hands onto the surface, and found the will to glare right back at her. "You know what, then? You fucking tell me what you'd do. Because I'm incredibly interested to know how you'd market that slutty little thing to a mass market of men."

Her eyes widened slightly again, and her mouth dropped to a pout.

"It's only 'slutty' because you say and think it's slutty," she cocked her hip and put a hand on her waist, and used her other hand to unbutton her suit jacket. "I hate that word, and besides, I actually think it's looks classy on."

He scoffed, sat down, and tried to turn his attention to his laptop instead of the woman he had spent two years fantasising about and who was holding lingerie. "I highly doubt that tiny thing could ever look classy. Chicks would only wear that to get one thing."

He saw movement out of the corner of her eye as she responded. "I don't know... I happen to think it just looks pretty..."

He glanced up to see her pull away the top of her blouse, a few more buttons open than there had been a few seconds ago, so he could see the black version of the teddy she held on her hands covering her left breast.

He swallowed thickly. He checked the time quickly. 4pm on a Friday was a reasonable time to leave, right?

"Do you uh, um, want to- want to come back to mine?" He stuttered his words and then they all came out in a rush like he was 15 again and trying to lose his virginity.

She smirked again, and raised her hands to rebutton her shirt. "Sure."

Three months later, Ichigo found himself jealous and suspicious.

They'd been sleeping together very regularly - very regularly - the whole time, and hadn't exactly been out on a date or gone official like they were sixteen years old or even said they vaguely liked each other, but Rukia's inability to be tracked down for over half the week every week was getting on his nerves.

She only came to the office two or three days a week, and worked from home the rest of the time. The days she did come in, she'd leave with him, go back to his, sleep with him, and always made sure she left before 10:30. She never stayed the night. She never told him where she went. She kept an emotional distance that implied it wasn't his place to ask, using him only for sex when she felt like it. The closest they got to a date night was when she would sometimes show up on a Saturday evening with a wicked smile and a kinky idea.

It would be the perfect set up for a guy like him, but Ichigo just couldn't get over the fact that he liked her. Not just like. He had a serious, serious thing for Rukia Kuchiki and, frankly, he'd had this thing for over two years now.

But the evidence was adding up, and Ichigo had to admit that he knew he wasn't the only guy in the picture. He couldn't be. She had a man living with her - boyfriend or fiancé, not husband or he'd know from the gossip columns considering her family's status. She gave him very little of her time outside work, she left early, and she was staunchly resolute on the importance of protection, to the point that, the first time they slept together again, she sent him out for condoms before she'd even let him take her blouse off to get to the lingerie beneath.

The evidence was mounting up. He wasn't happy about it, but if he was going to fall in love with a woman to the point he couldn't get sexual gratification without her, then she damn well was going to fall in love with him too and that would be the end of it. He wasn't the type of man to end up in second place.

Because, unfortunately, it wasn't just the sex. Before she'd come to work near and with him, he could tell himself it was just that, that she was the best he'd ever had and he'd only had her once and he'd been drunk, but actually spending time with her meant her personality was actually just as appealing to spend time with as spending time in her. He'd actually once or twice tried to slow her down when they were kissing and she was trying to move things along so he could talk to her, but that didn't seem to interest her.

Actually, he didn't seem to interest her.

Outside of his dick, anyway.

She was finding out things about him though - she knew about his sisters, that one each called on Wednesday and Thursday nights, that he read Shakespeare, that he tried to go to the gym at least five evenings a week even if it meant hoping she'd still be in his bed ready for another round when he got back, that he didn't go out on Saturday nights anymore in case she came over, that he wasn't sleeping with anyone else because he told her every time he put a condom on since he'd seen her take a birth control pill regularly with her lunch, that he'd been trying to get her number from her secretary, that it was easy to get him to do his job her way if she essentially had his dick under her thumb.

She just didn't seem interested in this information.

She didn't actually even really like looking at him if she could help it. She was always looking away, or closing her eyes, or getting him to take her from behind so she couldn't see his face.

So she probably had a boyfriend.

And Ichigo was determined to meet the guy diverting Rukia's attention.

This evening, his tactic was a level of control he wasn't aware he had. Sex with Rukia wasn't exactly controllable - she was wild and feisty and he physically couldn't get enough of her, he was constantly trying to keep moving and keep going and start again and get closer and make her feel so good she orgasmed so hard he could feel her muscles around himself. So he was pretty self-congratulatory when he managed to get her on her back, arms and legs clasped around him, whimpering and squealing as he changed his rhythm, when he suddenly stilled.

It felt like he was holding onto a rock face with one hand, but he was managing it.

Her eyes flashed open. "Wh-what are you doing?" Her voice was weak and quiet and strained as she tried to move her hips, but he pressed his weight down so she couldn't.

"Who's the other guy?" He forced it out quickly - the quicker the conversation was over, the quicker he could fuck her into oblivion again.

"What?"

"The one you're living with?"

She sighed shallowly and gave her hips another try, but it was useless. "What are you talking about?"

He growled, and pressed his weight down further until her torso was pushed into the mattress, the pressure against her abdomen making her whimper. "The one you spend all your time with. He's living with you, right? That's why we never go to your place and why you're always busy?"

Her nails dugs into his biceps as she growled in annoyance. "Do we have to do this now? I'm so close..." she trailed off, her voice taking on a seductive lilt that on a normal day would have Ichigo trying to mount her. But he was determined.

"Yes. We do."

She stared into his eyes for a couple of seconds frowning, then frowned harder and pushed him away from her body. He acquiesced, pulling out of her and sitting up on his knees. She didn't give him time to catch her before she stood and started grabbing clothing and shoving it on.

"Rukia."

She ignored him as she dressed.

"Rukia, I gotta know."

She turned to look at him as she buttoned up the white blouse she'd worn to work that day.

"I don't live with a guy. I don't have a boyfriend."

He felt and looked relieved for a second, but his frown returned quickly. "Then where do you go all the time?"

She walked out of his bedroom to the living space, and he stood and followed her, and leaned against the doorway and folded his arms as she found her jacket on the sofa, and put it on, flicking her hair out over it and not looking at him as she replied.

"To look after my children."

This had not been the reply Ichigo had been expecting, and as such, he nearly managed to fall over from a stationary position, falling to his left and hitting his knee against the door frame and swearing loudly.

She turned her head to look at him, her chin up, shoulders back and eyes steeled for a fight as he righted himself and tried to ignore his throbbing limb.

"You- you have kids?"

She nodded tersely. He struggled to close his mouth and make his eyes less wide, and did not succeed.

"How m-many?"

"Two." She nodded, posture unwavering. He didn't understand why she looked so defensive. This wasn't necessarily a bad thing. He was kinda in love with her, and two mini Rukias couldn't be that bad. She shrugged a little. "They're twins."

"Oh."

"Twin girls."

"Right."

Ichigo became vaguely aware that he was still naked with a semi, but he was sort of struggling to process thought outside of 'children' and 'Rukia'. What was the most captivating of all his thought processes however was that she didn't take her eyes off his. She hadn't done that before. It was distracting in a weird way.

"They're young."

"Okay." He was stepping towards her.

"Still babies, really."

"Right," he repeated. He walked until he stood right in front of her.

She swallowed, gaze unwavering. "They're eighteen months old now."

Somewhere in the back of his head, alarm bells began to ring, but he ignored them. This was more important.

Rukia was still staring into his eyes.

He nodded lightly.

Her eyes narrowed.

He was still staring, trying to process.

"As in, I gave birth eighteen months ago."

He didn't move, but the alarm bells got slightly louder.

"So I got pregnant two years and three months ago."

He still didn't move, but his inner conscience started to quizzically wonder why this information was important.

Rukia was looking at him like he was stupid.

His inner conscience donned a pair of glasses, and put his hand on his chin.

Rukia was starting to look incredulous.

His inner conscience produced a white board and pen, and started to do some sums.

She folded her arms, cleared her throat, and looked at the floor. Moving her eyes from his meant that some higher brain functions were restored, and his inner conscience produced a conclusion on the white board.

His brain blanked for a second.

"Are you fucking kidding me?"

She unfolded her arms and looked sternly at him. "Do I fucking look like I'm kidding?"

"You've had my fucking children and you didn't fucking think to tell me?"

She growled, and got on her tip toes to yell at him. "You were too busy fucking every girl that passed you by the time I found out, what was I supposed to do?!"

"You're supposed to fucking tell me you complete psycho bitch!"

She looked thunderous for a second before she whirled around and headed for the door, threw it open, stormed into the corridor and ran down the stairs of the apartment block.

He was following, yelling her name, until he realised his dick was out and his apartment door was closing.

Pants- Rukia- pants- Rukia- pants- Rukia- pants- ... pants.

"FUCK!"

By the time he had his pants on, she was long gone.

This was extremely unfortunate. He didn't know where she lived, and it was a Friday evening, so he had no way of going to the office and bribing someone to give him her address.

There was only one thing for it.

It didn't take nearly as long as he expected to be honest. It was the fourth door he knocked on, at about 1 am. He fished through every single apartment listing online that had been rented in the last three months in a decent vicinity from the office, that were at least two bedrooms and in the same price range as his or above - who knew whether the aristocratic Kuchiki's were helping to fund her - and made a shortlist of ones he thought Rukia would mind being caught dead in. He then visited them.

And lo and behold, either the Kuchiki's were helping her out a little or Rukia's commission was incredibly higher than his. There was no way she could have this apartment, have two kids and keep herself in the constantly changing Louboutins he saw wrapped around his neck on a regular basis on his salary.

He was pretty sure the silk thongs he kept biting through were a drain on her expenses too.

Now was not an appropriate time to have an erection, he thought as Rukia stood in her doorway, make up-less, messy hair, bleary eyes and in full white flannel pyjamas decorated with bunny rabbits.

"What are you doing here?" she asked unceremoniously and unenthusiastically, rubbing her eyes like a child.

"Our conversation wasn't over."

"But can't it be for now? It's like really late-"

He pushed passed her, and she was too slow and half asleep to stop him.

There were dim lights in her apartment, but he could still make out a toddler play pen, high chairs, bottles and various other child paraphernalia tidied up neatly around the immaculate living area of her own apartment.

"Our conversation isn't over," he repeated boorishly, and she winced.

"Will you be quiet?" she hissed.

"No, I think I've earned the right to be mad-"

"I didn't say you couldn't be mad, I said will you keep your voice down-"

"- and I think I should be allowed to know more about my offspring without you trying to brush me off-"

"Ichigo!"

"So stop-"

And then there was a baby's cry.

She glared at him as she hurried off.

He stood stock still until she returned with one tiny toddler on her hip, coming from the darkened room that must be their nursery. She was in a purple onesie, a tiny black plait in her hair, her thumb in her mouth and her big, brown eyes watering.

"This is Hisana." Rukia walked towards him, smiling between them. "She's about half an hour older than her sister, and she likes to cry a lot," she laughed lightly, and kissed her forehead. Ichigo couldn't look away. The baby smiled, her cheeks went pink, and she hid her face in her mother's neck. "She's also shy. Any idea where she gets that from?"

"Me," Ichigo choked out and lightly cleared his throat. "I was a cry baby," he rasped.

The little girl peeked out from her mother, and pointed at Ichigo.

"Orange," she enunciated clearly. "Masaki," she tugged on a stand of Rukia's hair, and he felt like he had been punched in the gut.

"Yes, like Masaki's hair!" Rukia beamed at Hisana as the baby nodded in agreement.

"The... the other is named- is named..."

Rukia busied herself looking at her daughter's fingernails. "I, uh, had my family run a background check on you when I found out I was pregnant. And uh, I read the reports? By the police. About your mother. And I wanted them to have something of yours, so... I named Masaki after your mother."

His brain went blank again, and even his inner conscience started pouring out a large glass of scotch and slumping in an armchair looking shocked.

She was staring into his eyes again. "Would you like to meet her now, too?"

He nodded, and she stepped towards him and began disentangling Hisana's finger from her hair.

"Baby, will you stay with Ichigo while I get Masaki?" Hisana nodded solemnly as she was handed over, and Ichigo suddenly found his arms full of a wriggling toddler who he tried to put down before she fell, and who began leading him by his finger to a toy on the coffee table while Rukia snickered.

The toy was a doctor Ken doll, and Ichigo have the sudden brainwave that he hoped his daughter wasn't going to follow in her grandfather's footsteps or he'd never hear the end of it.

But he sat down with her and stared at her, and she paid him no mind that way toddlers do as she toddled around, with his eyes and his nose and his chin and his ears and his eyebrows.

A whine came from beside him as another toddler was plopped down beside him, clearly just woken up, looking every single inch her mother except for her blazing orange hair and his own mother's unmistakably plump lips. She rubbed her eyes in a very familiar way and her mother sat beside her and rubbed her back through her pink onesie and Ichigo stared.

He didn't really speak. He couldn't. Babies handed him toys and talked in short sentences and smiled and got tired and grouchy and were put back to bed, and he was tugged up and led to a bed as well and he lay there staring at the ceiling fully clothed and tried to be mad that this had been withheld from him, and he was, but he couldn't articulate it just now. There was tomorrow when he could get angry and show his frustration and demand answers that he suspected he already knew but didn't fully understand, but that was tomorrow.

So he turned over, and saw the woman he was in love with and who happened to be the mother of his children staring at him like he may not be fully cognisant, and he kissed her.

Then he made love to her while she kept her bunny pyjama shirt on, because it was true love and she looked tired.

She did have twins, you know.

* * *

Yeah this was weird and fluffy, I'm aware.

There's a recurring theme in my fics, but I feel I should clarify. I don't think that having children is necessary to fulfilment - I actually plan to adopt if I ever have any at all. However, there's something about Ichigo and Rukia and their relationship and their childhoods and how they act towards their siblings that just screams good parenting (and I don't mean, not knowing where their children are like 'canon', I mean legitimately 10/10 parenting) and that I sort of think would be really fulfilling to them - Ichigo seeing his soulmate and wife as mother to his children and he'll always protect her and them to heal from being unable to protect Masaki, and Rukia having babies with Ichigo and giving them stability that she wishes she had and she saw Ichigo having, and they both have fulfilling family lives with the person they trust the most. Their children would grow up to be 1) hot, 2) powerful and 3) with excellent morals. Also, I just imagine their co-parenting as a tag team, and Ichigo as an actual daddy just seems adorable. So that's why this theme appears a lot, and also why I think Ichigo is painfully out of character at the end of Bleach because I can't imagine him being a father and not being horrendously overprotective of his wife and child, and Rukia having to slap him out of it when he goes too far and wants to walk between her and the road or something stupid so she's safe and a baby in her arms giggling and trying to slap him too. That's my head canon.


	13. Chapter 13

There will be a sequel to the previous chapter, and it is coming along. I just have no inspiration for it, but hopefully that will arrive.

Instead, there's this, which is because I'm currently writing dissertation number two, and I have no time for anything longer. This one is inspired by my life, and probably your life too, currently.

* * *

"It's wrong."

"But I think it'll end up being so _right._ "

"It's inappropriate and weird."

"It'd be so fucking hot, though. Imagine it, Ichigo. I know it seems wrong-"

"Of course it seems wrong, it shouldn't happen. It's not natural."

"But just imagine it... It seems so wrong but feels so right... don't you want this to happen?"

"... I still think it's weird."

"I know. But I think you should give it a try. You might love it. You won't know till you know, right?"

"... fine. Pass it here, and I'll set up."

Rukia smirked seductively, and passed it over so Ichigo could start preparing them both for the sexual experience of a lifetime.

"It just seems really fucking weird that we're rooting for a guy to fuck his aunt," Ichigo blurted out, changing the channel for Game of Thrones.

She settled down beside him. "I didn't know I could be this excited for incest, to be honest."


End file.
